


sleeping beauty and the assassin

by cartographicalspine



Series: The Hearthkeeper [7]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Awkward Conversations, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Multiple Wardens (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 20:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16025246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: Extended Title:sleeping beauty and the assassin only not a beauty and also mostly teeth and screamingZevran's first night with the Grey Wardens errs on the side of awkward, confusing, and electrifying. They're exhausted and more than a little sore...especially since he just failed to kill them all. One mage in particular might come to make him regret that.Set in an All Origins/Multiple Wardens AU. Also features brief cameos from Aeducan, Brosca, and Mahariel at the end.





	sleeping beauty and the assassin

Zevran had to wonder—heart pounding, hands grasping, skin prickling beneath electric air—if perhaps there was some subconscious part of him that was still looking for death. He had taken quite a blow to the head earlier, true; that dwarven woman...one of them, or both, had an enviable backswing. And yes, the little elven boy had offered him incessant chatter in exchange for something for the pain, and there was also the constant suspicious looks from around the camp, but…

...he was a trained _assassin_. He should know better than to make assumptions as stupid as this one. Especially in an uncertain and unstable situation as the one he currently found himself in, surrounded by a group of armed fugitives he had just tried (and failed) to kill.

That should have gone double for the ones that had already made it clear he was not completely welcomed into the group. The ones who took watch and specifically made it a point to shoot him sharp looks across the fire. One who took to bed when his watch was done and had looked all but dead to the world.

Literally.

Perhaps everyone else knew this, or was used to it, or did not care, but it had caught Zevran’s eye for some reason. Possibly it had something to do with suddenly finding himself free of a certain barbed, unfriendly stare on his back. He’d looked, and found Surana so still and motionless that his curiosity was piqued. And then a kind of unease. In the dark, and with his head still throbbing, he couldn’t see signs of breath or flush.

 _I swore an oath,_ was his first thought, strangely aching, and then, _they’ll blame me first._

His hands were cold when Zevran brushed his fingertips to them, and as he leaned over—

_Crack._

He swore as he stepped back reflexively, feeling twigs snapping beneath his boot as he tried not to stumble, but the icy fingers clasped around his wrist were like a vice and held him in place. Glancing down in bewilderment, he found himself staring into a pair of burning eyes, and that was when everything went wrong.

Zevran had faced mages before, so thank experience and reflex that he reached for the loose band in one of his belt pouches (third on the right), tangling it around both their hands just as a cold, keening thread of light cleaved past him. His next breath saw the light sundered and dead, sudden as it began. The reedy scent of activated magebane filled the air as magic flushed away.

To his credit, Surana kept his composure well. He kept it much better than Zevran had expected, face a still mask and voice a steady, if thin, presence in each uttered word, “what are you doing?”

Under different circumstances, he would explain the series of thoughts that had led him to his current position. He might have even cracked a disarming smile or two, let his voice run smooth and warm and light, a play on the fool. Anything to diffuse the situation. Anything but rushing through his jumbled thoughts. “I thought you were dead.”

Whatever terrible assumptions the mage jumped to, it was clear that it had been entirely the wrong thing to say. Surana struggled hard against him, his eyes wild and dark, his words a rush of vehemence. _“What did you do to me?”_

“I did nothing to—”

Zevran bit back a yelp as he narrowly avoided the knee coming up between his legs; it took moments of scrambling and shifting to pin his legs down, and by then Surana had gotten in a couple of good kicks to his shins. “Unhand me, you barbarian.”

“I assure you,” Zevran hissed through clenched teeth, “that I have done nothing to you. Now if you could just calm down...”

“Take this off me. _Now_.”

Fair enough, he had heard that magebane was an experience mages preferred to distance themselves from as soon as physically possible. But he needed his own assurance first. Distance and mages (especially one as high-strung and incensed as the one beneath him) tended to be deadly for most people. “Do you promise to remain calm?”

“No.”

Zevran blinked hard, and then he forced himself to take a calming breath. “I don’t think you understood. I will release you once you stop trying to attack me, agreed?”

“You will release me now and I will do as I please,” Surana snarled, scrabbling at Zevran’s hands. Even now there was a growing charge in the air, barely held in check as Zevran tried to form different tactics before the next shock of magic actually hit home.

“That’s a tall order from the man trying to kill me,” he grinned tightly, only to be met with a dark, venomous glare and a jab with a bony elbow that nearly got him to loosen his hold.

“You’re the one who tried to kill me first,” Surana shot back, a brittle, jittery-heartbeat pulse beneath Zevran that was the furthest thing from dead any assassin could want a person to be. Not that he’d wanted him dead in the first place, but _now…_ “Let me go and I won’t kill you _that_ slowly.”

...yes, now.

“You really don’t listen, do you?” Zevran winced and tightened his grip around those sharp wrists, stamping down another wave of panic as the air crackled between magic and not-magic. “I was not—”

No, too much effort to talk and not die an agonizing death. His hands were burning where they had once been freezing, and was that _frost_ on his fingertips?

“Alright, alright. Break up it, gents.”

Someone hauled Zevran to his feet even as he struggled to maintain his hold on Surana, but Aeducan had a grip tempered by that greatsword she’d swung at him earlier and the strength to back it up. She shoved him back and kept him there with that pretty but incredibly intimidating glare, though honestly, he was just relieved that his skin was no longer crawling with that relentless electric feeling.

Brosca, who had spoken, knelt beside Surana and looked him over briefly, tugging him free of the worn bonds and the last residue of magebane on them. “Deep breaths...see? No harm done.”

And then Surana shot up, clawing at Zevran with so much ferocity that he almost mistook him for an animal. Or worse. If Aeducan hadn’t caught them both midstep, he imagined they’d be right back at square one.

“Enough!” Aeducan growled, throwing them both to the ground. _“Surana, get it together!”_

“ _Stones_ , Surana!” Brosca almost sounded impressed. “What’s got you?”

Surana scowled, disheveled and heaving and glaring sharp, poisoned daggers at Zevran. “I woke to him hovering over me like—”

He did not seem the type to be at a loss for words, and yet that was where he was. “...after he swore in front of us all, he tried to kill me. Do you still want to trust him _now_?”

“I thought you dead,” Zevran spat back, wishing he’d buried his curiosity along with the concern he should have learned to ignore by now. “My only crime was making a false _assumption_. Had I known you were asleep, I would not have bothered you at all.”

They all fell silent, Aeducan and Brosca exchanging a subtle glance, and Surana looking murderous beneath his icy glare, and Zevran wishing he’d gone to bed when he had the chance. Finally, Aeducan pressed a hand to her temple, closing her eyes and muttering a lot of names and words that probably meant something incredibly offensive to dwarves. Brosca, on the other hand, threw her head back and laughed.

“Don’t blame you on that, Crow. Scary sometimes, huh?” She gave Surana a warm, easy grin that looked like it just rankled him. “See? You were just sleep-addled and overreacted something fierce.”

He opened his mouth as though to argue, but soft, fluttery fingers found his hand, dark on light. None of them had heard Mahariel join them until he was at Surana’s side, but his golden smile was enough to make Surana fall back into himself.

Rising to his feet more steadily than his heart beating against his thin chest would have suggested to Zevran only moments ago, Surana gathered himself up with a stifling air of superiority and sniffed delicately. “I do not _overreact_.”

With that, he swept away in smooth, regal steps that would have begged Zevran argue the point; he had seen monarchs with less grandiosity and self-importance in their public appearances than this one mage had crammed into his poise just crossing their dirt-and-mud campsite. He settled himself on one of the makeshift benches closest to the fire, helped himself to a gleaming bottle from the alcohol stashed in the middle of the group’s belongings, and poured himself a drink which he proceeded to stare at in the firelight.

Aeducan rolled her eyes, though Zevran got the distinct impression it was a general gesture intended for all of them. Grumbling, she headed to the firepit as well, leaving Zevran with his remaining two companions still awake and interested in what had happened here.

Brosca yawned and stretched her arms above her head, rolling her shoulders with a disturbing number of popping sounds.

“Get some sleep,” she nodded, making her way past the other bedrolls to presumably find her own and do just that. “He’ll cool off. Or he won’t. Best avoid him either way.”

Zevran rubbed his neck and wondered just what he had done to put himself in a situation like this. Why couldn’t he have just shut his mouth for once and let them kill him painlessly while he had the chance earlier? Why had he not begged for death as he’d planned?

Unaware of his dark thoughts, Mahariel plopped down on Surana’s abandoned bedroll and patted the space next to him. “Sit with me?”

He raised his brow and tried not to look in the direction of the fire. “This isn’t his?”

“Oh, it totally is, and he’ll _so_ blow his top off when he sees us.” A sobering look crossed his face, but just as suddenly he brightened and continued in a cheery, reassuring tone, “but you should sleep while you can so you’re happy and rested when it happens.”

Zevran decided, as he was seriously contemplating the boy’s offer, that he really needed to find that strange subconscious part of him still seeking death and demand that it make up its mind, one way or another, before these Wardens made his mind up for him instead.


End file.
